


Revenge Is Red

by Esin_of_Sardis



Series: Glasgow Smile [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, glittering imp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-03
Updated: 2013-12-03
Packaged: 2018-01-04 15:34:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1082729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esin_of_Sardis/pseuds/Esin_of_Sardis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gold is finally able to use magic, and he goes to enact revenge on Regina.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Revenge Is Red

**Author's Note:**

> Anonymous Prompt

Magic had returned to Storybrooke. Rumpelstiltskin could feel it surrounding him, just there. All he had to do was reach out and touch it. The power was his.

For the first time in twenty-eight years, he could walk through the town’s streets without Belle guiding his every step. His sight remained un-restored at her request, but the magic was enough to show him the way. He could feel the way it ebbed and flowed around the physical world. His eyes might see darkness, but no longer could anyone know that simply by observing him.

Belle was still sleeping when he left her. When he was around her, he tried not to feel magic—it seemed cheating almost. He didn’t need it around the house anyway. He’d cast a spell to alert him if anyone besides him or Belle entered without invitation. After twenty-eight years, he knew instinctively where everything was. Magic wasn’t his only advantage after all. His mind was as sharp as ever.

The pattern of his shoes and cane on the street was a powerful one. He held his head high, walking with purpose as if a slight limp was the only thing hindering him. He could feel the stares of people around him. They had their memories now. They knew who he was. What he was capable of.

The mayor’s house wasn’t a far walk. The gate creaked as he opened it. His shoes and cane tapped louder on the front path up to the door. He opened the door with magic, striding in as if he owned it. He owned everything else in town, it could be an easy thing forget he didn’t own this place too.

“Get out of my house,” Regina said, coming out into the foyer to meet him. With a wave of his hand, she flew back, hitting the wall with a thud. She tried to rush at him, but before she could get her breath back to do so he’d trapped her against the wall with magic.

“Hello dearie,” he said, a snarl coming into his voice.

“What do you want?” she snapped. “Let me go.”

He laughed. “No.”

He walked towards her slowly, letting the memory of Belle’s scars fill him as he went. The way she hated to mention them. Her shame around him because of them. The pain she had gone through. Hate filled him. Burning hot and coursing through his blood. This could not stand. This was all Regina’s fault. Belle was hurt, in pain every day because of what Regina had done.

He let his cane fall to the ground—his fury was enough to fuel magic to allow him to walk without it. He could feel Regina’s anger and growing fear more and more the closer he got.

“What are you doing?” Regina asked.

“Getting my revenge!” He laughed, knowing that Regina might pretend otherwise, but she knew exactly what he was talking about. She’d always known. She’d placed Belle just so she could see his ignorance of her suffering day by day. He came to stand before Regina.

“You told me she was dead!” He could feel the old madness rising up in him again. The dramatic flair to his movements, the sharp giggle, the split-second switches between barely controlled fury and bitter mocking.

“I told you what you wanted to hear.”

He laughed. She was desperate now, struggling under her bonds. Her excuses didn’t tire him—yet. It was so easy to become the imp again. His refined suits of this world didn’t stop him. He couldn’t see them. Regina could, but he knew that as he paced in front of her, cane abandoned in favor of magic in the heat of the moment, she saw the imp as well.

“What I wanted to hear? No. No, no, no, no. You told me what fit your grand plans.” His voice was scathing, but still he reached forward to touch her cheek with the back of his hand. Pity it was no longer scaled. Still, she jerked her face away and he giggled again.

He stepped back as the echo of his laughter died in the tops of the high-ceilinged room, he was calm. Perfectly composed. He wondered if she could read the cold hate in his clouded eyes. He’d come here in the midst of hot fury, but that was gone now, simmered by madness into ice cold calculation.

“You hurt her.” With a wave his hand, his cane returned to him and leaned on the cool metal top of it as he stepped forward. “You tortured her.”

Regina’s breaths were heavy, thick with terror, the only sound in the room. She feared him as she should have from the beginning. She should have feared him enough to never try to take Belle from him. Now, she would pay the price for her foolish boldness.

“Did you truly think that because you took away my sight, I wouldn’t know?” He stepped closer to her. Regina would nearly have to cross her eyes to focus on him now. He had no such problem. She was just where he wanted her. Trapped and afraid. “Did you think I wouldn’t be able to hear how her mouth can’t completely move to form words? Did you think I wouldn’t be able to feel the scars under my lips?”

Regina couldn’t hide her disgust at the idea of him kissing Belle’s scars. Or maybe it was just the idea of him kissing Belle in general. It didn’t matter either way. He smirked at her discomfort. He couldn’t see her face, but he could feel her emotions well enough. They practically oozed from her pores. She had never had much control.

Reaching into his coat, he pulled from it a knife. Magic had sharpened it more than any physical means could have. Regina took a sharp breath at the sight of it. Rumpelstiltskin stepped forward again, bringing the flat of the blade to slide along her perfect cheek, morbidly caressing it.

“It’s only polite, you see,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “When you give someone a smile, you ought to receive one in return.”

With a flick of his wrist, the blade twisted in his hand to point at her. She flinched and let out a sharp hiss of pain as the tip brushed her cheek. Rumpelstiltskin’s smile only grew as he imagined the red now staining her pale white skin. She and Snow White could have shared the same beauty if Regina’s hadn’t been marred by her black soul. Hair as black as a raven’s wing and skin as white as snow. The Evil Queen and the Innocent Princess. Now one of them would have a smile red with blood.

It was a pity he wouldn’t be able to see his handiwork. He wanted to see the Queen suffer like Belle did every day. He wanted to see her pain. But Belle had asked him not to restore his sight, so he wouldn’t. Regina would see the wounds though. Every day in the mirror. Belle would see them and know that her torturer had not gone unpunished. The whole world would see them and know what Regina had done. And the price she had paid for daring to harm what Rumpelstiltskin loved.

He positioned the knife to begin cutting, savoring the way Regina’s breath turned frantic and hiccuped. She opened her mouth to scream, but Rumpelstiltskin placed his finger to her lips.

“Ah, ah, ah,” he said. “No sound yet. Don’t worry. In a few moments, everyone will hear you scream.”

She shook her head to get rid of his finger. “Don’t touch me.”

Rumpelstiltskin laughed.

The front door flew open with a bang. He turned around. “Who’s there?” he snapped.

Footsteps, then a woman panting. “Don’t do it, Gold,” Emma said. “Step back.”

“No.”

“You can’t do this,” Emma said. “Let her go. She’s not worth it.”

“She hurt Belle. She deserves it,” he snarled, turning back to Regina. He lifted the knife again, about to cut—

“Belle wouldn’t want this,” Emma said. “I’ve only met her a couple times, but I know. She wouldn’t want you to do this.”

Gold didn’t lower the knife, but he didn’t cut. Not yet. Truly, he knew Emma was right. But this was justice. This was revenge. It had to be done.

“Please, don’t do this,” Emma said.

“Yes, don’t,” Regina added. One bit of magic, and Regina’s bonds tightened, drawing from her a squeak of pain before she was again silent.

Gold turned around, settling his hands on the top of his cane. “If I don’t, you’ll owe me a favor.”

“No,” Emma said. “I already owe you one.”

“I won’t leave just because you asked me to, dearie.”

“Yes, you will,” Emma said, totally confident, her breath regained so she no longer panted. Gold raised an eyebrow. “You see, I don’t know Belle very well, but I have her phone number. I can call her over here in seconds.”

“And if I let the Queen go?” Gold asked.

“I won’t mention it. Belle will never know. You can go home.”

“Very well,” he said after a moment. “You have yourself a deal.”


End file.
